18-01-2017, 14:35
I'm willing to wager a £10 bet that we will stay up with anyone who disagrees ,thats how confident I am .
IT'S CALDWELL
18-01-2017, 16:25
I'd take that if you want but I don't want to compromise a friendship. I can only see three sides we could finish above. So it'd take good management and some clever dealing and/or an unsuspected crash and burn from somebody like maybe Gillingham who made a big managerial error with Musselburgh.
19-01-2017, 00:50
I dont understand the doom and gloom merchants ,we are seeing the shoots of a revival at the club and I hope and believe Caldwell is the man to take us forward.For the first time in ages Im really looking forward to Saturdays game and I hope the stay aways see the club is making an effort and return .
19-01-2017, 12:01
I hope you are right Pooch, but I fear, like the rest of us, you've spent too long in the desert and have now seen a mirage.
Our owner is treating us like a plaything, our team seems poor to indifferent, our new manager is unproven without a big budget and was in the process of failing when asked to compete against clubs with similar budgets. We have a huge debt which may or may not, continue to be underwritten and we do not know whether that decision will be made with our interests at heart, or out of sheer capriciousness. Buyers may, or may not, be interested in us and we do not know their true intentions.
Mr Caldwell might be great, but equally you could say we've swapped a man who had already saved us once for a man who has never saved anybody. In general I like to embrace change, but if we expect Mr Caldwell to grow us some green shoots we have to get him some compost and all I can see at this very long range looks like concrete and shifting sand.
Our owner is treating us like a plaything, our team seems poor to indifferent, our new manager is unproven without a big budget and was in the process of failing when asked to compete against clubs with similar budgets. We have a huge debt which may or may not, continue to be underwritten and we do not know whether that decision will be made with our interests at heart, or out of sheer capriciousness. Buyers may, or may not, be interested in us and we do not know their true intentions.
Mr Caldwell might be great, but equally you could say we've swapped a man who had already saved us once for a man who has never saved anybody. In general I like to embrace change, but if we expect Mr Caldwell to grow us some green shoots we have to get him some compost and all I can see at this very long range looks like concrete and shifting sand.
21-01-2017, 01:24
Dev,I seem to remember you being equally sceptical about Paul Cook when he took over .
Lets see if he makes an immediate impact tomorrow ,I think it will be too early but Im looking forward to getting back to the type of possession football I enjoyed under Cookie.
Lets see if he makes an immediate impact tomorrow ,I think it will be too early but Im looking forward to getting back to the type of possession football I enjoyed under Cookie.
21-01-2017, 13:28
No I wasn't particularly sceptical about Paul Cook, for me that is, - except his arrival was a very dirty piece of business that made me wonder about his loyalty to anyone and that our enthusiasm seemed to be the sole result of an excellent 4-3 game against Accrington (and my doubts about his loyalty proved accurate when he negotiated with Portsmouth whilst managing us to defeat in the play-offs). BUT, he was a player I always admired.
With Caldwell my doubts concern the value of his record. You could say his promotion was bought and he could not stop a slide towards relegation. Equally with Cookie it would've been reasonable to question whether success in Ireland would translate over here on the basis of a few attractive performances from Accrington. That one worked out for us. And at our level we have to gamble. Will this work out? I certainly would have let things roll with Ritchie, who I originally didn't want at the club at all! If we go down, and that has to be the most likely scenario, what do we do with Caldwell?
I'm sceptical about the whole notion of a new manager riding into town like a sheriff to clean things up and turn everything round. Most of em have been brought up in football to lack loyalty, standards, morality and for some even normal human decency is a step too far. Witness how Sheridan talked to the referee at Notts County to get his latest ban. He treated some of our players in much the same way. Sceptical yes, and also ashamed that such a man was ever our manager. He could play the game, but he'd never understand the notion of playing the game ........
With Caldwell my doubts concern the value of his record. You could say his promotion was bought and he could not stop a slide towards relegation. Equally with Cookie it would've been reasonable to question whether success in Ireland would translate over here on the basis of a few attractive performances from Accrington. That one worked out for us. And at our level we have to gamble. Will this work out? I certainly would have let things roll with Ritchie, who I originally didn't want at the club at all! If we go down, and that has to be the most likely scenario, what do we do with Caldwell?
I'm sceptical about the whole notion of a new manager riding into town like a sheriff to clean things up and turn everything round. Most of em have been brought up in football to lack loyalty, standards, morality and for some even normal human decency is a step too far. Witness how Sheridan talked to the referee at Notts County to get his latest ban. He treated some of our players in much the same way. Sceptical yes, and also ashamed that such a man was ever our manager. He could play the game, but he'd never understand the notion of playing the game ........
21-01-2017, 14:12
Trouble is Dev its no longer a game to some. Its just a money conveyor with little or no respect for the game or club. It just so happens a round ball and a foot get involved from time to time. The game needs radical overhaul but those in charge haven't got a clue what day it is so forget it. Fans wont accept failure these days. Long gone are the days where you took relegation in your stride and just accepted the other teams were better that season and build on a solid base for the next. Doncaster did it with Ferguson and look at them now.
In the meantime rogues and misfits will prevail. Whilst ever the game is awash with millions at the top things will never change.
What would put the fear of god up everybody, would be a few million Sky and BT subscribers not renewing contracts. Now that would be interesting.
In the meantime rogues and misfits will prevail. Whilst ever the game is awash with millions at the top things will never change.
What would put the fear of god up everybody, would be a few million Sky and BT subscribers not renewing contracts. Now that would be interesting.
21-01-2017, 19:54
Just got back and the first impression I got is how very similar to the Cook style it was, patient probing using wingers .
We dominated the play without creating too much in front of goal and it was a very promising performance considering he only had 3 days preparation.
It took Cook until the second season to get the team he wanted and if we can stay up this season it will be a massive achievement .
We dominated the play without creating too much in front of goal and it was a very promising performance considering he only had 3 days preparation.
It took Cook until the second season to get the team he wanted and if we can stay up this season it will be a massive achievement .
21-01-2017, 20:31
1st half was much better than the second. They started pushing up on us more and making us rush things. Thought Dan Gardner had a stormer though, best game for a long time. Its just a pity that even if we had been playing until tomorrow morning we still wouldn't have scored. If we are going to avoid the drop, Evans need to start scoring again and pretty damn quickly.
Pooch, I'm interested in your opinion of Simons. I know you had hopes of him at the start of the season that were so dashed your opinion became forget about him forever. (I always kinda hoped he might just be a young player being encouraged to do things that weren't part of his game or character, which I think also happened to Ricky German. And you know who I think was responsible.) Is a player going to emerge, or was he the reason we didn't score?
Dancing, apparently Sky is becoming Skyfall as far as footie is concerned. We'll all be streaming for free, cos we don't wanna to pay. Yes, my view is Wigan should've stuck by Caldwell and see if he had it in him to save them. My view of Cookie is he gave us two good seasons and left behind a legacy of devastation. Once he was going to leave so were all the players at the end of their contracts. AND he did it to go down a division. He came dirty and left dirty, like so much of football.
Yes we are desperate for Ched to score, but he went a long time at Sheff Utd without a significant return before he started scoring for fun.
My view is managers aren't that different. Klopp's a messiah, I like him, but he couldn't beat Swansea, Allardyce can't buy a league win, people are saying Pulis's West Brom are good to watch, Pep threw out a good keeper, put a new one under unbearable pressure and doesn't seem to have grasped that's the basis of his problem, Mourinho picks Fellaini in front of Rashford, Lee Johnson saved Bristol City and now can't win .......... and when Pooch or Matt produce their stats of managerial wins they aren't that different. No one manages Chesterfield and wins 75% of the time and getting down to 20% is beneath the dumbest of clucks. It's not like the exam results in Form 3B. (If you want to win 75% of the time, manage Celtic.)
My conclusion is that managers are similar kinds of bloke, from similar backgrounds, educated in the same way and we shouldn't be surprised they find the similar solutions to the same problems, their teams look much the same and that all their figures regress to the median (is that right? the median?). Danny succeeds at Barnsley, saves us then fails, Cookie gets a bigger budget and more support at Portsmouth but can't repeat his success with us, Ferguson relegates a Doncaster team that looked like play-off contenders on paper and is now getting them back up ............ And so it goes. And as Dancing says our desperate desire for success makes us impatient. All we see is smaller pictures. We never give the bigger picture time to be drawn. Football's like those Rolf Harris pictures where you thought it was going to be a wallaby, but it turned out to be a paedophile (I definitely did not write that!).
Dancing, apparently Sky is becoming Skyfall as far as footie is concerned. We'll all be streaming for free, cos we don't wanna to pay. Yes, my view is Wigan should've stuck by Caldwell and see if he had it in him to save them. My view of Cookie is he gave us two good seasons and left behind a legacy of devastation. Once he was going to leave so were all the players at the end of their contracts. AND he did it to go down a division. He came dirty and left dirty, like so much of football.
Yes we are desperate for Ched to score, but he went a long time at Sheff Utd without a significant return before he started scoring for fun.
My view is managers aren't that different. Klopp's a messiah, I like him, but he couldn't beat Swansea, Allardyce can't buy a league win, people are saying Pulis's West Brom are good to watch, Pep threw out a good keeper, put a new one under unbearable pressure and doesn't seem to have grasped that's the basis of his problem, Mourinho picks Fellaini in front of Rashford, Lee Johnson saved Bristol City and now can't win .......... and when Pooch or Matt produce their stats of managerial wins they aren't that different. No one manages Chesterfield and wins 75% of the time and getting down to 20% is beneath the dumbest of clucks. It's not like the exam results in Form 3B. (If you want to win 75% of the time, manage Celtic.)
My conclusion is that managers are similar kinds of bloke, from similar backgrounds, educated in the same way and we shouldn't be surprised they find the similar solutions to the same problems, their teams look much the same and that all their figures regress to the median (is that right? the median?). Danny succeeds at Barnsley, saves us then fails, Cookie gets a bigger budget and more support at Portsmouth but can't repeat his success with us, Ferguson relegates a Doncaster team that looked like play-off contenders on paper and is now getting them back up ............ And so it goes. And as Dancing says our desperate desire for success makes us impatient. All we see is smaller pictures. We never give the bigger picture time to be drawn. Football's like those Rolf Harris pictures where you thought it was going to be a wallaby, but it turned out to be a paedophile (I definitely did not write that!).
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